“Shut it, Lou, an’ don’t go swabbin’ what brains he’s got out o’ him———”
But Lou backed to the fence, crossed his legs, and began to speak slowly, his hands in his pockets, and a half-score men listening. And he did not guess he was loosening the sod for more graves than one. Lou came from the North, where the pakeha learns the beliefs and the hates of the Maori, on land soaked in the blood of both races; and what he had to tell he told cleverly, to trouble the wide-eyed boy before him. So that in the end Roddy went away, sick and shaken; and giddy with the unfolding of a horror too vivid for his sensitive brain.
“Brute yer are, Lou,” said Danny, fiercely; and Lou grinned, filling his pipe.
“Tell you, it’s a real joke to rattle that kid. He gathers up every egg you chuck at him, and sits on it.”
“He’ll hatch trouble out o’ that one, belike,” said Hall. “’Tain’t right———”
“Bah! Those steers are sold, Danny, so we’re right; and that’s all I care about. Let the kid go to blazes if he likes.”
Roddy chased his shadow swiftly up the white road. At the corner Gordon’s wife stood at a cottage-door, merry-eyed and cleanly, with children tumbling at her feet. The scent of hawthorn came over the gate with her voice.
